I have now completed my time with the help desk and Service Management and moved onto the Governance team. The back end of my placement was intense but it was a great feeling to complete all my objectives and I also received some good feedback from the team. My new placement in Governance is made up of the Programme Office and the IT Architects, so I will be splitting my time between the two over the next six months.

 My first 3 projects will be for the Programme Office which is made up for the IT project managers. I will be delivering a high profile project on Service Orientated Governance (SOG) which is a project aimed at changing long standing procedures and methods of running projects within IT. Currently the focus is on Project Orientated Governance which involves a lot of paperwork and is a lengthy and drawn out process. By focusing on the service aspect we aim to push out these long winded methods and stop repetition, and instead re-use existing documentation and templates, eventually placing them into some sort of catalogue or library with easy access. My other projects include creating a new 'test lab' at one of our sites where all our testing PCs will be kept. In order to do this I will need to find out which applications and software are used by various teams and find out if these can be supported and in order to reduce the number of PCs I will ensure some of the applications needed can be accessed via virtual machines instead of physical machines, freeing up extra space.

 I am still actively involved in development opportunities beyond my placement role and currently involved in 'The Graduate' event where I will be facilitating group exercises and running the YW stall promoting our Graduate Scheme and answering any queries. I also took part in the One Million Green Fingers Project last week which was a very fun day out at a school in Huddersfield. The activities on this day included the construction of a dry stone wall in which the children placed their time capsules and the erection of two willow domes which the children will use as outdoor classrooms.

 As the weather is 'hotting' up I will also be organising a large scale 5-a-side football tournament to raise money for Water Aid. This event is hugely popular each year and it will be my job to ensure this years is equally if not more successful.

I will have my hands pretty full with all these projects and trying to get my head around all the processes involved in IT project management. So I will get back to the reading now and get myself up to speed with the project management life cycle and become an expert in SOG.

 Sandeep

Serving the Desk

I have been with the Service Desk for just over a month now and have become a lot more competent in handling calls and dealing with a variety of queries. I have found that when dealing with particular queries more than two or three times you generally pick it up and don't need to rely on any documentation.

I have also been given my objectives for this placement which include some very interesting and exciting projects. The main one is looking into PRM (password reset manager) and rolling this out across our Leeds office - Livingston House. PRM is a tool used to unlock user's accounts who have forgotten their passwords. It is a quick and effective tool which saves a lot of time and means less password related calls coming through to the Service Desk. This project will involve liaising with a number of contacts across the Leeds site, giving presentations and drop in sessions to ensure all 500 staff members are shown how to use the PRM.

Another one of my objectives includes an investigation into the top 10 most common call types the desk receives. I will do some data analysis and make a report to see what the most common calls are and whether there is anything we can do to bring these call volumes down. This will include liaising with external IT specialist agencies to see how other companies deal with similar issues.

I am still doing work with the University Liaison Group and attending the careers day at Titus Salts High School tomorrow! I have also recently joined the Right to Read initiative so will be going to Thornbury Primary School once a week to help a child with their reading. A few other things I'm running include organising a charity football tournament for Water Aid and a project to have new cabinets fitted into the Thornbury office foyer to hold all our IT awards and trophies.

It is really fast paced on the desk so I am really trying hard to perfect my time management skills in order to complete all the tasks within the three months I have with the Service Desk. Hopefully I would of made significant in roads into my projects by next month and will give you an update then.

Sandeep

Hi

I have now finished my first placement with End User Support and started with the Service Desk. This team are the first point of contact for all IT issues across Yorkshire Water. They deal with a wide variety of queries giving me a clear view of all the IT applications YW use along with the fixes and resolutions to overcome such challenges. It is very different from End User dealing with more users and working in fixed shift patterns as opposed to flexi time.

The knowledge I gained from End User will come in handy within my new placement as I now know many of the fixes to resolve the majority of the queries coming through. However it may be more difficult to manage a successful balance between development opportunities and time spent on the Service desk. This is because the team consists of 8 members who deal with over 300 calls per day.

I am also currently involved in creating new presentations for the YW University Liaison Group. This will involve putting together five new presentations as opposed to the single generic one we currently use. These will include IT, Regulation and Strategy, Production, Customer Service and Networks and Kelda Water. In addition to these presentations I am also involved in attending a careers day at Titus Salts High School. This also involves producing an interactive session to keep the year 9 students busy for a full hour which I will be delivering throughout the day.

I have only worked in Service Desk a few days yet so still waiting to find out what my priorities for this placement will be. Once I have these I will be able to get stuck in and make a bigger impact to the team. So I shall look forward to giving you a more in depth update next month.

Sandeep

I am nearing the end of my placement in End User Support and it has been fantastic. A really good first placement where I have developed lots of new skills and IT knowledge. Hopefully this will put me in good stead for my next placement which will be on the Service Desk. I am still giving an extra big effort at the moment to get on top of my placement priorities, focusing particularly on toughbooks and laptops.

With regards to my personal development I recently attended the Dragon's Den event at Abbey Grange High School which was a great success. It involved being one of six Dragon's from different companies, having A level students pitch their ideas to us. It gave the kids a good chance to develop their presentation skills and gave me a good opportunity to give some positive feedback. Feedback plays a massive role within YW so being able to give positive and constructive feedback with real solutions is definitely a good skill to develop. I also attended our Customer Service and Networks Half Year event at the Galpharm Stadium in Huddersfield. This involved guiding a group of 20+ people around to different stands ensuring we stuck to a schedule in order to view all that was on offer. Each stand had a 15 minute presentation on the different teams with CS&N so was a really good insight into another business unit.

Moving back towards the IT business unit I have also recently become part of our Project Review and Technical Review teams. This involves taking minutes and actions for all the projects currently running or shortly due to start. The Project Review is where new projects are first pitched to a panel of senior IT professionals who dissect the idea and decide whether it is good to be approved or not. Ideas passing the Project Review are then forwarded to the Technical Reviews which looks at what is actually involved in the implementation of the project. Being involved with these reviews will give me a really good insight into what is currently happening in IT and increase my knowledge of the project management side of IT.

I have also started organising presentations and other interactions with Leeds and York universities since joining the University Liaison Group, so managing my time between personal development and meeting my placement priorities is becoming increasingly more challenging. But nevertheless its still lots of fun and I'm enjoying every moment of it.

Sandeep

Another month in and my placement in 'End User Support' has started to take off. I've now been given my objectives which required me to become competent in building tough books, laptops and using our main operating system - ITBM. I have briefly started building and configuring laptops, tough books and desktops but mainly focused on Blackberry's. I was given the opportunity to take responsibility of all our Blackberry's, taking the pressure off the rest of the team and allowing me to become a pro at configuring them. This involved synching them with the YW systems and then handing them over to users across the company. This was a fantastic opportunity to network and get myself known. Most of this work took a while to get the hang of but my confidence has grown massively after seeing how much help and support is available whenever I have needed it.

 I have had support from all my co-workers, my line manager and my sponsoring manager. However I think the best support has been from my fellow graduates, who despite doing different tasks, are all in the same situation facing similar challenges and experiences. Starting from this week I am now trying to focus more on building laptops to get in line with my objectives, and in a few weeks move onto tough books.

On top of learning many new skills through my placement in End User Support I have also been taking part in YW's other development opportunities. I have been involved with further Water Aid events including a Water Aid Pop Quiz and the Water Aid in Wonderland event, which involved dressing up and ensuring the night was a success raising lots of money for this amazing charity. These events were not only to raise money for this important cause, but to increase awareness of it too. 

I also took part in my first Speakers Panel where I spoke to The Morley Adults Schools at The Central Methodist Church in Morley. Here we spoke to the group about YW giving a brief history and about the processes involved in both clean water production and waste water treatment. The presentation was aided by some useful videos and not only did the audience gain a better understanding but I did too. This really helped with my knowledge on YW as well as my public speaking, building my confidence up. This led onto my first University Presentation delivered at Bradford University with my sponsoring manager Beth Dodd. This was on CV's, Applications and Interviews where I had the chance to share my experience on the application process, giving some useful advice to second year students who will be applying for jobs in the near future.

I have also got involved in a few other projects which I will look forward to telling you about once they get started. These include joining the University Liaison Group, meaning I will be the first point of contact for Leeds and York Universities from now on; registering to be project leader for our One Million Green Fingers campaign for Brodetsky Primary School; going to a Dragon's Den style panel for A level students at Abbey grange High; and preparing for an IT workshop aimed at year 9 pupils from Titus Salts High School. So hopefully I can give you an update on these and everything else I have been up to on my next blog.

Sandeep